Dr. Jeremy Frank gave an invited talk at the NASA Quantum Future Technologies Conference, which took place at NASA Ames Research Center, January 17-21, 2012. Dr. Frank’s presentation was titled, “Applications of Quantum Computing: Human Spaceflight Mission Operations.” The focus of the talk was a description of the complexities of human spaceflight mission operations, especially in future missions where communication delays between spacecraft and the Mission Control Center are expected to be long. Mission planning is a key part of mission operations, and the difficulty of planning coupled with small spacecraft crews will increase the challenges of mission operations. The promise of quantum computing is to decrease the time needed to plan and replan. Doing so is plausible because planning can be transformed into an unbounded optimization problem that can be solved by quantum computing algorithms. However, several challenges remain to be addressed for this technology to be employed for human spaceflight mission operations.

BACKGROUND: Ames Research Center hosted NASA’s first Quantum Future Technologies Conference, which included over forty speakers from academia, government, and industry from around the world. The goal of the conference was to provide in-depth discussion on how quantum technologies can benefit NASA objectives in space exploration, aeronautics, and Earth and space sciences, where quantum technologies can have a great impact.